I'm finding this one can tend to look slightly miserable in wet or humid weather. Some of the buds ball, others don't. Still looks good overall as long as the soggy ones are taken off. This is easy to do with thumb and forefinger, as the pedicels are slender and easy to snip off with your thumbnail.

No blackspot at all so far. Appears to be completely immune, and has never been sprayed.

I had a Blush Noisette in my garden (Netherlands, z8, heavy sea clay) for about 4-5 years, it pretty much did nothing at all all that time, just got a few blossoms and stayed small 50 cm 1 twig wonder. Last autumn I was fed up with it, so I dug it up and planted in another garden, on a sandy soil (poor sandy soil on top of that). This year in that garden (without even any feeding), it is 1 m high 5 cane wonder, loaded with blooms. Not sure if that was rootstock problem or it generally prefers more acidic sandy situation, but in my garden it did not want to grow at all (musks next to it were fine on same rootstock), when in a new garden 40 km further it is a fine rose.

My presumed 'Blush Noisette' (taken as a cutting from Blechynden House, Bridgetown in 1998) certainly has thorns - on the smooth wood. The canes are variable in the number of thorns they carry, but I would describe them as "sparse".

Have just received a bare root plant from T4R and no, it aint thornless.

This is obviously a very young plant with limited growth, and things may change a bit down the track, but at the moment the thorns are quite small, generally not hooked (or only slightly) but fairly numerous. On average there would be roughly one every inch or 25mm or so, sometimes grouped around the cane and sometimes not.

Overall it's not a terrifying thing, but definitely not thornless. However, it should make nice flowers so I'm not going to grumble.